Product Description

This unique, insightful book tells the story of an old man and a boy as they travel through the history, development, implementation, and universe of the blues. Essential for every guitarist's library.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #316818 in Books
• Published on: 1986-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 154 pages

Customer Reviews

Blowhard Narrative Hides Whatever Good There is Here
All kinds of folksy crap like, "Now listen here, Son," gets in the way of whatever this guy has to say. He talks down to the reader, goes for obscurity in his tablature,, rather than clarification. I owned the book and actually couldn't wait to get rid of it. This is a book for people who have no ego and don't mind being treated like they have no brains.

best music book I have found!
This book is invaluable! I had piano lessons and guitar lessons as a kid but I never "got it." I read this book, and now I "got it." For the first time ever I know where chords come from, and I know the basics of how notes are chosen for the songs on the radio.

This books focuses on Blues, but the theory part will apply in principal to other styles of music. As for the Blues -- this book is one-stop shopping! Besides the theory from which scales, chords, and songs are made, all the notes for E and A across the entire fretboard are presented. More chords than you want are in there. Drills in E and A are in there. Numerous 12-bar and 8-bar Blues patterns are in there. Fifty little licks are in there. And the history of Blues music is in there.

Invaluable.

kinda dumb
Well, i didn't really like the whole narrative aspect of the book that much myself. it seemed to me to get in the way of the guitar instruction, and while there was some interesting information and culturization that occured while reading this, it would just be better to listen to some old records or maybe read something that goes into more depth about the music.

the actual instruction was where the book kinda suffered, mostly in the innane notational system that they devised. the different sized dots representing time values was pretty much the most confusing and stupid thing i've ever experienced..., they could have at least spaced them out more equally so you could tell what the values were.

there was some ok info about superimposing the major onto the minor pentatonic to get all the color tones, but then by saying one was the star, the other the crescent, etc. was like... what the hell? It's like they were trying so hard to seperate the instruction from standard music theory, which in principal i can agree with because standard western theory doesn't really cover anything well except for classical music, but then it just invents all these stupid terms and ways of teaching that are totally arbitrary rather than working with the materials that are all over the place in millions of other blues books.

blues you can use is a good series of blues books.

--Dan